Project Partner: Ecofiltro

Ecofiltro helps families access safe water by locally manufacturing and selling water filters. In 2014 Ecofiltro partnered with Climate Impact Partners to establish a carbon program that provides a sustainable revenue stream to expand its reach and impact. The reliability of this funding and the technical support provided by our team has been critical to Ecofiltro’s growth.  

Working with Climate Impact Partners, Ecofiltro has accessed carbon finance to subsidize the cost of delivering water filters to more than 175,000 families across Guatemala, reducing 200,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year.   

What support did Climate Impact Partners provide?

Ecofiltro chose to work with Climate Impact Partners because of the extensive support and the level of expertise we provide.  Our team has worked with Ecofiltro to deliver five carbon program verifications – the process by which carbon reductions are measured and independently verified, before carbon credits are issued for the project to sell. Our Guatemala-based project specialist visits the project regularly to discuss opportunities for greater scale and ensure the project continues to thrive and deliver maximum impact. 

We are responsible for the marketing and sale of carbon credits that are generated by the project. Working with our range of clients all over the world, carbon credits from Ecofiltro are included in carbon offsetting portfolios to meet carbon neutral targets. 

Climate Impact Partners continues to work closely with Ecofiltro to ensure that every activity is delivered to the highest quality, including the redesign of project monitoring to continually meet and exceed the evolving requirements of Gold Standard methodologies. 

How does the carbon finance project work?  

In Guatemala, where 59% of the population lives below the poverty line, 54% of the rural population lacks access to clean water. Families decontaminate water by boiling it over wood-fueled fires, a carbon-intensive process that produces hazardous smoke and contributes to deforestation. 

Ecofiltro water filters eliminate the need for families to boil water, which in turn improves health and saves families around USD $210 a year in firewood. They also cut carbon emissions and reduce deforestation. 

Climate Impact Partners helped adapt the Gold Standard methodology for clean cooking into a methodology that allows carbon finance for safe water projects like this. Using this methodology, Ecofiltro was able to establish a successful carbon program. 

The benefit of carbon finance for Ecofiltro

Carbon finance provided Ecofiltro with an alternative to a traditional high-interest bank loan. Ecofiltro uses the carbon finance to maintain a consistent price for water filters, regardless of its rural customer’s location or increasing supply chain costs. These subsidized prices allow Ecofiltro to reach more customers and in turn generate employment for local manufacturing, sales, and delivery agents.  The project has also used carbon revenues to expand its factory, which now has the capacity to produce 2,000 filters a day.  

In the future, Ecofiltro plans to use sustained funding from carbon finance to reach one million Guatemalan families by 2025.